High-Tech Low Touch Medicine... Not a Great Trend: Episode 5

The emergence of a high-tech, low-touch healthcare environment is not beneficial to the human condition. The second quote from my portion resonates deeply… but it’s at the end of the pod ;-). “… Visits have become transactions and volume is the currency… but volume without value is noise…”“… We (3) still believe in traditional medicine… where visits go back to where it belongs… in a space between two people, one who is suffering and one who is listening…That’s where the art still lives. And if we don't protect that… all the AI, robotics, and precision medicine won’t make up for what we lost… … because medicine isn’t just about fixing what’s broken… It’s about understanding what’s human…” 26 min. This was a deeply personal episode. I’m not sure many people see what’s emerging and recognize what it means. Medicine has never had more technology.We can see deeper, measure more, and diagnose faster than ever before.And yet… patients aren’t necessarily doing better.We’re drowning in data, but starving for meaning.We image too much, diagnose too much, treat too much — and often, we listen too little.Somewhere along the way, the practice of medicine shifted from conversation to transaction. Twelve-minute visits. Click boxes. Pre-filled templates. The pressure to move faster, see more, bill more.But the heart of medicine was never in the imaging suite or the EMR. It was in the exam room — in the pause before the next question, in the hand on a shoulder, in the act of truly listening.This episode is about what happens when high-tech replaces high-touch — when algorithms replace intuition — and how we can take medicine back to where it belongs: between two people, one trying to help the other. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howardluksmd.substack.com/subscribe